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‘EU could increase globalisation fund’

The European Union could increase spending to help workers hit by the effects of globalisation to more than €500 million a year after last December’s budget deal for 2007-13, according to the EU’s employment and social affairs commissioner.

Vladimir Spidla told European Voice that it could be possible to increase the budget for the planned Globalisation Adjustment Fund, which is designed to help workers who lose their jobs if globalisation causes factory closures or layoffs, once the instrument proves its effectiveness.

“The sum provided for the Globalisation Adjustment Fund at the beginning is limited…but if we see it is working well we can increase it,” he said. He added that the fund could help up to 350,000 people over the period.

The fund was agreed by EU leaders in December 2005 as part of an overall budget for 2007-13 and allocated €500 million a year. Several governments states, especially those from central and eastern Europe, were not keen on the proposal, saying it could be a fund for ‘losers’ and would only benefit the ‘old’ EU15 member states. But it is a key element of the Barroso Commission’s strategy of convincing citizens of the benefits of globalisation by helping the most vulnerable workers deal with the impact of industrial restructuring.

Spidla, a former social affairs and labour minister in the Czech government of 1998-2002 and later Czech prime minister, said that it was “not the Commission’s job” to prevent changes in the economy and labour market brought about by factors such as globalisation. Instead, the objective was to “manage change” to ensure the best possible opportunities for workers.

He rejected the suggestion that the prospects for job creation in European societies were disheartening. Spidla pointed out that despite the media focus on ‘delocalisation’, ie where companies close down factories and shift production to countries with lower wage costs, the phenomenon accounted for only 2% of all job losses.

He also stressed that the EU had created two million new jobs in the last two years. “Is that so little? It’s not enough but Europe is creating jobs”, he said.

Spidla was quick to produce figures to refute the suggestion that he and the EU in general had practically stopped agreeing new employment legislation as part of a consensus among EU governments on the need for labour market flexibility.

“Under [Romano] Prodi, there were eight directives on the labour market, four on health and safety at work and one on anti-discrimination. There have been seven since I took office,” he said.

He also preferred the term flexicurity – a mixture of flexibility and security – to describe the objective for European labour market policy. Nor did he accept that the new consensus on flexibility meant it would be impossible to reach agreement on working time, one of the priorities of the current Finnish presidency of the EU. “We have a good opportunity [to get a compromise]”, he said, adding that under the two previous attempts to reach a deal “we were very close”.

While it was important to manage the change in European economies and societies to maintain a good standard of living for EU citizens, Spidla was adamant that new employment and labour market policies were the best way to safeguard jobs rather than old-fashioned attempts to defend existing posts against the tide of change.

“Innovation and flexibility are protection. Bulwarks are no protection. The history of the Maginot Line shows that”, he said, adding “the status quo is not an option”.

Asked whether he saw the new governments in Poland and Slovakia as sign of a long-term problem for the EU or a short-lived phenomenon, Spidla was reluctant to comment. But he said that the Commission would be keeping an eye out to ensure member states respect the EU’s established body of law, the acquis communitaire. In particular, his staff were checking to see that all countries had correctly implemented rules outlawing discrimination on race and other grounds. “This is not a routine thing because anti-discrimination is very important. It’s a real sea change [for countries],” said Spidla. But, he stressed, the Commission’s priority was not to punish countries that had failed to implement these rules properly. “We’re there to help,” he